Africa's Expanded Role as a Resource Base for Tomorrow

Bob Fryklund¹, Andrew Hayman², and Pete Stark^3
1IHS Inc, Houston, TX
²IHS, Geneva, Switzerland
³IHS, Denver, CO

Africa's Expanded Role as a Resource Base for Tomorrow
Africa is emerging as a key provider of the world's future energy with more than 2 mmbopd expected to be added in the near term. Angola has recently join Nigeria and Libya as an OPEC member. Leading the way has been exploration, particularly deepwater West Africa. In addition, Africa is consolidation and harnessing once unwanted gas with major LNG projects underway or recently completed in Egypt, Nigeria, Angola and Equatorial Guinea. Closing fast is work on field growth particularly in North Africa where tremendous resource adds lie in fields in Libya and Algeria.
Many factors, both technical and commerical, are responsible for Africa's rise. This paper will examine the key factors, such as exploration, and provide a scorecard for several of the key plays and regions.
Incorporated in our analysis will be a look at the major challenges such as the capitol cost dilemma, access and market constraints.
Finally we will provide a glimpse at what the future might hold with a review of new plays and trends, both technically and commerically, including a look at the inventory of discovered undeveloped in select key areas such as Nigeria.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90072 © 2007 AAPG and AAPG European Region Conference, Athens, Greece